by Ben Wolf
“Additionally, a smaller force will look more like an envoy of peace to the Saurians rather than an approaching army as well. Either way, we’re risking our lives for the very soul of Kanarah,” Condor concluded. “It is for us to serve, Premieress, and for you to decide how.”
Lilly nodded and gave her decision. “We will take the smaller force. General Balena and General Tolomus will throw a fit, but we’ll need all the soldiers we can spare to join Lumen’s forces once we’ve seen this through. We depart tomorrow morning at dawn.”
Calum stared at the light emanating from his left hand, the only light in the darkness around him aside from the stars above and what shone from the sliver of moon hanging in the sky. The light still burned inside his hand whenever he used it, and it intensified the brighter he made the light.
Even so, he could control the brightness and tolerate the burn to a point. Perhaps, in time, he’d learn to maintain the light for longer periods in spite of the burn. Maybe the light would even become a weapon.
Lumen had promised him authority and power. Perhaps this was the beginning of that manifesting within Calum.
He closed his fist, and the light faded along with the burn.
A week into their journey, Axel and the rest of the group crossed into the Desert of the Forgotten. A troop of ten soldiers, all of them under General Tolomus’s command, and as many members of the Royal Guard, led by Condor, accompanied them.
Admittedly, Axel didn’t really know what kind of mayhem they might be walking into, between the desert and Reptilius beyond, but the idea of a few extra Windgale soldiers, all of them ultra-fast Wisps, set him at ease. He’d seen what Condor and Falcroné were capable of, and though he doubted each of the additional soldiers could compare, some of them at least came close to that level.
Probably.
Condor’s soldiers wore dark-purple armor, and General Tolomus’s elites wore vivid orange armor with deep purple accents. He’d almost spoken up about them changing their armor colors—especially the orange ones—but he decided to leave it alone.
If they wanted to be obvious targets, that was fine with Axel. And if nothing else, he’d be able to see them wherever they went.
“Are we going the right way?” Lilly asked Condor. She walked with him at her side while Calum and Magnus followed right behind them. Axel, as usual, trailed at the back of the group. He didn’t hear Condor’s reply, but he saw Condor nod.
While the additional soldiers had given Axel an improved sense of security, he had almost elected to stay behind once he found out that General Tolomus was coming along. To his surprise, thus far they hadn’t exchanged so much as a single word during their jaunt into the desert. General Tolomus mostly kept to himself and to his elites, and that suited Axel just fine.
Something skittered across his boots on the dry ground. A black scorpion, no bigger than his index finger, disappeared under a gray rock.
Yeesh. Axel shuddered. For all his fearlessness, he couldn’t bring himself to deal with anything creepy and crawly larger than the pommel of his sword. Bugs freaked him out—especially the kind he’d found here.
Back home at the farm and near the quarry, there’d been flies, moths, and spiders aplenty, but none of them had grown especially large—aside from the occasional corn spider, which Axel had mostly managed to avoid. They were harmless anyway.
By contrast, one look at the tails and pincers of these scorpions had told him everything he needed to know, and he gave them a wide berth.
So far the desert appeared as he’d expected: arid, sandy, scattered with rocks and canyons and mesas and sparse vegetation. Reminiscent of the bleak Valley of the Tri-Lakes, only tan and brown instead of gray. No trees, no water. Just endless wasteland, as far as he could see.
Not a place he’d want to visit, to say the least, and certainly not a place he’d want to live. But now, at least, he could say he’d been there.
Four lines of vivid-orange soldiers hovered high above Lilly’s personal entourage, led by General Tolomus. Ahead of Lilly, the ten purple-clad members of the Royal Guard floated ten feet above Lilly’s group in a loose circle.
Far ahead of them, Kanton, Riley, and his Wolves led the group. Upon entering the desert, Riley insisted that he take the lead. Having been a resident, he knew the territory and could better alert the group to any approaching dangers.
His Wolves stayed with him, of course, but Axel had no idea what Kanton was doing up there. He wasn’t good for anything unless it came to medical tasks.
A sharp hiss sounded to Axel’s left, and he jumped back with his sword in hand. “By the Overlord!”
Another scorpion skittered away, but this one exceeded the size of a housecat—black with prickly hairs, crablike pincers, and a long black tail tipped with a menacing teal barb.
Axel’s heart rate tripled, and he scrambled ahead to get away from the thing. He took his eyes off it for just a second to make sure he wouldn’t run into Calum from behind, but when he looked back, it was gone, replaced by a plume of yellow dust.
“What is wrong with you?” Magnus looked back at him, and so did Calum.
Axel hesitated. No sense in showing weakness to these two idiots. “Nothing. Almost tripped over something. I’m fine.”
“Sure you did.” Magnus snorted and faced forward again.
Whatever. Knowing Magnus, he’d probably just as soon eat one of those scorpions like he had with the rats in the sewers under Kanarah City. The opinion of a scaly guy who ate rats didn’t matter to Axel.
A few minutes later, Axel had again allowed himself to fall back from the group by ten feet or so when another hiss sounded from behind a large rock.
Enough of this. Time to face his fears and put a stop to these critters’ harassment at the same time. Sword in-hand, he steeled himself, rounded the rock, and raised his sword.
A black teal-tipped tail lashed at him. Axel yelped and swung his sword, severing the scorpion’s barb from its tail. Dark goo squirted out of the wound, and the scorpion gave off a shrill screech.
Then it skittered toward him with its pincers raised.
“Whoa!” Axel slammed the edge of his blade down on the scorpion and split it into two halves, oozing more black goo into the dry dirt.
It looked like the same one from before, but Axel couldn’t be sure. It was about the same size, and equally horrifying. It didn’t matter now, though. It was dead, and that’s what counted.
Something touched his shoulder.
He yelped again and whirled around with his sword raised to find Calum standing there. “What in the—Calum! Don’t sneak up on me like that! I almost killed you just now.”
“Easy.” Calum held up his hands. “I was just checking to see if you were alright. I heard you scream, and I—”
“I did not scream.” Axel lowered his sword and glared at him. “I had to take care of a scorpion. That’s all.”
Calum craned his neck but Axel moved in front of him to block his view. “Why won’t you let me see it?”
“It’s nothing. I killed it. We’re fine.”
A hulking dark form materialized over Axel’s right shoulder, and he jumped.
Riley.
“By the Overlord!” Axel exhaled a ragged breath. Why was everyone sneaking up on him? They were as bad as the scorpions. “Riley, I know you just heard me tell—”
“What did you just do?” Riley growled.
Axel glanced at Calum. “I killed a scorpion. It’s not a big deal.”
Riley’s blue eyes widened. “Where is it?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It matters.” Riley pushed past him and started toward the scorpion’s carcass.
“Why?”
“Hey,” Condor called from his spot next to Lilly, “what’s the holdup? We’re not stopping now. We’ve got at least thirteen more miles to cover before—”
“Quiet,” Riley snapped. “Listen.”
“To what?” Axel eyed him.
“Listen.”
A low rumble sounded, and then the ground began to vibrate beneath their feet.
Axel stepped back, but the rumbling intensified to quaking. Fifteen feet away from him, a gigantic mound of sand swelled from the ground. Pieces of it broke open, and dozens of black scorpions the size of the one he’d just killed streamed out.
But it didn’t end there. The mound itself fell apart, revealing a massive black beast—another scorpion, bigger than any horse Axel had ever seen. An enormous teal barb tipped its tail, matching the jagged teeth in its bulging pincers.
It started toward Axel.
“Run!” Riley shouted.
Axel took off toward Condor and Lilly. When he looked back, the gigantic scorpion not only followed, but its gazillion legs actually propelled it forward so fast that it gained on him. Dozens of cat-sized scorpions skittered after it.
He screamed. He didn’t care how he sounded at this point. A giant scorpion and its babies were chasing him through the desert. If that didn’t call for screaming, nothing did.
Ahead of him, Lilly and Condor took to the sky, and Calum and Magnus ran behind Riley and his Wolves. Curses swarmed through Axel’s mind, but he didn’t bother saying any of them out loud. He was too focused on running for his life.
He followed the others toward a gorge framed by two rock walls that gradually narrowed. Axel’s legs pumped faster. A cacophony of screeches trilled behind him as he reached the gorge and ran between the walls.
Ahead of him, Riley slid through the narrowest part of the walls and into a small canyon, followed by his Wolves, then Magnus, then Calum. Axel glanced back.
One of the scorpion’s pincers snapped at his head, but he ducked out of the way. A loud crack echoed off the walls.
Axel’s legs and lungs burned as he bounded over rocks and sand, all the while closing in on that narrow outlet. He eked through the opening, and another crack reverberated behind him, followed by a horrendous screech.
The scorpion writhed in the crevice with its left pincer reaching through the opening and clomping for Axel, who stood a solid five feet out of its reach.
“Ha!” He pointed his sword at it, dripping with sweat and breathing heavily. “That’ll show you. Now you know what happens when you mess with me.”
“Axel—” Calum called from behind him.
Axel didn’t turn around. A slow but steady stream of the cat-sized scorpions squeezed between the rock walls under their enraged mother and skittered toward Axel. His chest clenched, and he quickly hacked three of them to pieces, but they kept coming. He backed up slowly, carefully, so as not to trip and fall.
The mama scorpion screeched even louder, but her cracking pincers stopped, and she receded from the opening.
“That’s what you get for trying to eat me.” Axel spat and chopped another baby scorpion in half.
“Axel!”
“What?” He turned around.
In the center of the canyon, between Calum, Magnus, Axel, Riley, his Wolves, and the only other way out, two large mounds arose from the ground.
The big scorpion behind him screeched again. Axel turned back as it crested the top of the rock walls, then it started to crawl down into the canyon, all while its babies flowed toward him, unhindered, from the crevice, blocking any hope of escape.
Now Axel did curse, and he did so prolifically.
Chapter Twelve
Lilly’s heart thundered in her chest as she stared down at the canyon and her friends trapped inside. “We have to help them!”
“Stay back, Premieress!” General Tolomus flew in front of her, blocking her from trying to intervene. “Those creatures are filled with lethal venom. A single sting, even from one of the smaller ones, could kill you.”
“All the more reason to help them, General!” Lilly pushed past him but darted straight into a charcoal breastplate decorated with a black raven insignia.
Condor caught her by the shoulders and looked down at her with those piercing blue eyes. Even amid the mayhem below, Lilly still found herself hypnotized by them.
“Easy, Lilly. Let us handle this for you.” Condor barked an order to the Royal Guard, and they zipped down into the fray. “General, give us the aid of your elites, and we can end this much sooner. We needn’t fight at all if we can grab our land-dwelling friends and pull them to safety.”
General Tolomus fixed his exasperated gaze on Lilly. She nodded at him, and he gave the order. Condor followed a mass of vivid orange blurs toward the canyon, and General Tolomus hovered next to Lilly.
“He’s going to get himself—and you—killed if he keeps hurtling into battle like that. Now I’m the only one left to ensure your safety.” He scowled at her. “He is as unfit as ever to protect you, Premieress.”
“Then I’d better make it easy for him to keep track of me.” She zoomed down into the canyon amid General Tolomus’s calls for her to stop.
Axel ducked under the big scorpion’s pincer snap, rolled away from a spree of lashes from a half-dozen smaller scorpion tails, then dove behind a boulder to avoid the big scorpion’s venomous tail. Its teal barb jammed into the dirt where Axel had just stood, then its second strike clacked off the boulder behind which he crouched.
It screeched, and something scraped against his armored shin.
He jumped back with a yell and lashed his sword at the rat-sized scorpion at his feet. It splattered into black goo, but mama scorpion’s tail whipped toward Axel again. He started to raise his sword to defend, but something rammed him from the side. The teal barb embedded in the dirt once more.
Axel regained his footing in time to see General Tolomus and two orange Wisps latch onto his limbs with their hands, and he quickly lifted away from the fracas below.
He shouted, but they dropped him to the ground a half-mile away from the canyon from about seven or eight feet in the air, then dashed away. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but as soon as he got his breath back, he started after them.
Axel hollered, but soon a mix of dark-purple and vivid orange blurs flew overhead. Pairs and trios of Wisps each carried one of his friends. Calum. Riley. Each of Riley’s Wolves. Magnus came last, carried by fifteen Wisps, some of whom had raced back for a second trip.
Condor, Lilly, Kanton, and General Tolomus landed last, and while Condor took a quick inventory of the Windgales who remained, Lilly approached Axel. “Are you alright?”
The truth was, he’d never been more afraid for his life than in those few short minutes in the canyon. The skittering and clambering and tail-lashing had worn his nerves raw, and it was all he could do to keep from physically shaking now that he was safe again.
But Axel wasn’t about to convey any of that to Lilly.
He brushed some dust off his breastplate. “I’m fine. Was just starting to have fun.”
General Tolomus glared at him. “Have your fun at your own expense next time.”
Axel ignored him with an eye roll.
“Is everyone accounted for?” Lilly asked.
“This time, yes, but we were fortunate. It could have easily gone the other way.” Condor eyed Axel. “I suppose they don’t have scorpions where you’re from, do they, Farm Boy?”
Axel’s jaw tightened. “I told you not to call me that.”
“Those are Gargantuan Scorpions. They’re one of the desert’s many dangers, but one easily avoided if simply left alone. They usually only attack if provoked.” Riley also glared at Axel. “So stop provoking them.”
“Hey, the first one came after me.” Axel pointed at him. “You would’ve done the same thing.”
“Whatever the case, if you see any more, stay away from them,” Magnus said. “You ran away from the first one you saw. Just do that from now on, please.”
Axel’s eyes narrowed. “I did no such thing.”
Magnus hissed at Axel through his nostrils.
“Fine. I’ll avoid them. We all will. Right?” He looked around the group, but no one replied. He nodded for good mea
sure anyway. “Right.”
“Let’s not tarry,” Lilly said. “We should keep moving.”
At her word, the group resumed its formation as if nothing had even happened, and Axel soon found himself trailing behind yet again.
They camped several hours later atop a mesa large enough to hold them all but small enough to defend from any encroachments, if it came to it. Its steep edges would also make scaling it a difficult task for any foe, whether Warg, Wolf, scorpion, or anything incapable of flight. The group could rest easy that night.
Calum recognized a hidden benefit of having so many extra soldiers accompanying them: more time to sleep. With more soldiers, he only had to stand watch for an hour once every two nights, a far cry from his days in the woods with only Magnus and Axel to split time with.
Still, he found he couldn’t sleep. Ever since they’d released Lumen, Calum hadn’t had any more of his dreams. Rightfully so, he mused—with Lumen freed, he no longer needed to reach out to Calum with instructions.
But now whenever Calum lay down, he grew restless and never managed more than a couple hours of sleep at a time. What was happening?
“Can’t sleep?”
Calum whirled around, but saw nothing. Then a figure materialized out of the darkness. Riley. Calum shook his head.
“Me neither.”
“What’s keeping you awake?” Calum rubbed his eyes.
“History.” Riley sat down next to him near the fire.
Calum squinted at him, but Riley didn’t elaborate.
“You?”
Calum shrugged. “Not sure. I’m plenty tired. Just can’t seem to fall asleep.”
Riley nodded. “A lot on your mind.”
Calum glanced at Lilly, who lay surrounded by three layers of soldiers and guards, including Condor and General Tolomus.